Interview / Sebastian Coe: Tom Humphries on how a blueblood of the track proved peerless in the art of bidding for Olympic Games

Lord Coe, Baron of Ranmore, steps from the lift without fanfare or retinue. He's wearing a jumper. Frankly, it's all very disappointing. He shakes your hand warmly, cracks a joke and asks if you're okay. Yes. You are okay. Then again you're not okay. Certainly not. You nod at Lord Coe, Baron of Ranmore, and appraise him with narrowed, peasant eyes.

You are stupefied. One loud thought persists: Bastard! The Baron's bastardliness grows with each joke.

His Lordship isn't going to pander to your prejudices, which is a shame because you've lugged the entire set of prejudices along with you. Now you have been decommissioned and must deal with a new set of circumstances. Poor form, Your Lordship. Tsk Tsk.

First to confession. If you are old enough to have chosen then probably you chose Steve Ovett. Back in those grey old Cold War days when no Americans went to Moscow and no Russians travelled to Los Angeles, the entire Olympic Games were about Steve Ovett versus Sebastian Coe.

Coe was the 800-metre genius. A very English slice of white bread who could cover two gut-busting laps like nobody before him and virtually nobody since. And he could do it with a fluidity and grace which disguised all effort.

In 1979 he set an 800-metre world record which lasted until he broke it in Florence two years later. That record lasted until 1997. His time of 1:41.73 would have been good enough to win gold in any Olympic Games, including Athens.

Of course, though, that was the twist. He never won 800 metres gold. He won silver in the event at Moscow and LA. In each Games though he came back to win gold in the 1,500 metres.

Those performances were among the most astonishing in Olympic history, but, be honest now, because he looked like an extra from Chariots of Fire, because he looked as if he should be running in a blazer and finishing not with a sprint but with a dash, you begrudged him.

And anyway those golds were Ovett's. In Moscow, Ovett gave a victory wave even before the final started. Why not? He'd been unbeaten in the 1,500 metres since 1977. Then he finished third in Moscow. Four years later Ovett was the 1,500-metre world-record holder and Coe had spent much of the previous season in a hospital bed. Again Coe took 1,500 metres gold.

Again we groaned. Ovett was quirky and spiky, but he had a head on him which suggested he might have hurled junior for Wexford and snagged turnips on summer days in the back field. Coe looked destined to be what he would eventually become, a Tory peer. There was some unspecified, unproven tension between them. You had to choose. Most of us went for Ovett and cheered against Coe.

We plumped for Ovett although he was the more surly and ultimately the more brittle of the pair. We went for him instinctively and with certainty and we never appreciated that when Coe said after losing the 800 metres in Moscow that he had a mountain to climb, he was perhaps the only man in the world capable of climbing it.

Looking back, Coe was astonishing and he confounded us. Once himself and Ovett swapped the world mile record three times in the space of nine days. Coe it was, however, who had the last word. He ran till illnesses and injury stopped him from running anymore. Still we didn't love him. And then he came out of the closet and told us he was a Tory.

Frankly we had always suspected that but in another way we just weren't ready.

Years later when Sebastian Coe found himself in charge of the London Olympic bid, he was a Lord, he was a former Tory MP and former chief of staff (and judo partner) to William Hague. Disgustingly he looked as if he hadn't added an ounce to his racer's frame nor a grey hair to his locks. The blue blazers and red ties seemed to have been designed for him. He was easy to write off.

We looked at him and smiled. Too English, too blazered, too uptight for schmoozing the old rascals of the IOC.

What news of Chelsea, my Lord?

He sits down now grasping a steaming mug of cappuccino that has so much chocolate on top it might just be cocoa. He has too a plate of sandwiches overshadowed by an impressive slackheap of crisps. Having been disarmed by his friendliness and warmth you search for one last satisfaction. You ask for news of Chelsea.

It seems that all Tories "support" Chelsea. Very safe. The equivalent of being seen swaying gently to the music of Jamie Cullum and pronouncing yourself a jazz buff. If a Tory wants to muster what passes for credibility in yoof culture he makes a little Chelsea footie reference.

Coe, however, muses for a while on the ramifications of a fixture with Portsmouth. Who is blessed with form, who isn't, the impact of Portsmouth's managerial problems, the divine wisdom of The Special One. Again this is disappointing. He speaks like a football fan. You can see why the hard nuts and elderly codgers of the IOC succumbed.

He tells a couple of yarns and you laugh out loud. You put your hands above your head and walk slowly towards him.

Draped from your wrist is a white flag.

You surrender. War is over.

Seb Coe is a likeable, charming man. He has won. He eats crisps and he doesn't get fat. He has two Olympic gold medals. He talks football and he worships Muhammad Ali. He forces you to look past the distressing deviance of his Tory orientation and examine your own prejudices. Bastard.

English lives aren't necessarily supposed to have two acts, but in securing the Olympic Games for London, Coe may just have eclipsed his own considerable achievements as a younger man.

The London bid which prevailed in July was remarkable for lots of reasons. When Coe was a schoolboy growing up just outside Sheffield his father would bring him occasionally on a run which went for 10 miles uphill from the time he left the front door. Thus it was with the London bid: uphill all the way from the time he took over from the American businesswoman Barbara Cassani just over a year before the bid.

London wasn't sexy. London was in the war. London had bad weather. London had poor transportation. London had withdrawn a sweetheart scheme for athletes. London had the BBC and the BBC had stitched up the IOC on its Panorama programme. London had third place in a field of five a year before the vote.

That the bid prevailed was due in no small part to Coe's instinct to let the passion out. London sang the song of sport. The French ticked all the technical boxes with bureaucratic efficiency and sighed impatiently that they deserved the Games. London ticked boxes but set about creating a celebration of sport. The French managed to look stiff and hidebound. The English came to town smelling of joie de vivre.

A few months on, what does it all mean? As Coe sips his coffee and mops the plate with the remains of his sandwich the London bid has suffered what will be the first of a thousand "Cost Crisis!!!" headlines. The architect for the aquatic centre has submitted a plan which, neatly, came in at twice the budget.

Coe is admirably nonplussed. If the spirit of the London Olympics is to survive the spirit of the London Olympics accountants and the spirit of the London media somebody has to keep the eye on the bigger picture as well as the bottom line.

"We answered one question early on in this bid. Why? Every city that wants to stage an Olympics goes painstakingly through all the hows of staging the Games. We knew we had to get the technical things in place, too, but the template was always genuinely to have athletes at the centre of it. That is my DNA. I've been to too many championships where the athletes have been the first thought and the last consideration. Every time you are told these are the Games for the athletes. And it's crap.

"So asking why we wanted the Games was the right thing to do. It took some intellectual rigour. You have to get it right for sport and for athletes or forget about it. If you can't get athletes to where they need to be, you're not going to do the rest. Ifwe got it right, remember it wasn't in essence about how we did it. Most organisations should ask themselves occasionally, why? Why are we doing this?

"For us it wasn't to build a better road network or have so many bed spaces or to sell contracts to 15,000 suppliers or have a million and a half tourists. You won't excite people by that. The correct response to those things is why isn't your government doing those things anyway? We wanted to succeed for sport and to enjoy the impact which sport can have on peoples lives. That's how we will be judged."

Guardian Engel

tries to get an angle

Coe retired from running in 1990 and was elected MP for Falmouth and Camborne just two years later. It was a curiously apposite training for chairing the London Olympic bid.

He recalls his early days on the campaign trail, wandering around his putative constituency tailing a large number of colour writers from the national papers who had been dispatched in search of comedy and lightness. Coe was aware that he was attracting a lot of media attention because of who he had been. He knew the pitfalls and the potential benefits.

One day he was being accompanied on his rounds by Mathew Engel the famous cricket writer for the Guardian.

"I walked down this particular drive. Knocked on the door. Had a little conversation. Then followed the instructions that you are always given as a candidate. I left. I gently closed the gate, making sure never to look as if I was in a hurry. I got outside the gate and a very anxious constituency chairwoman looked at me.

"Well?"

"Well?" I said, "what do you mean, well?"

"Well? Are they going to vote for us?"

Coe looked at his constituency chairwoman and said he had no idea.

"She didn't say and I didn't ask."

And that's how it went through the two years of campaigning among the IOC members. Nobody said. Nobody asked. The air was thick with rumours of deals and pacts and promises but nobody knew. The business was just one of endurability.

Last March, for instance, Coe's mother, Angela, passed away. Her funeral was at four in the afternoon. Coe had to be on a plane to Brisbane at eight in the evening. From the airport in Brisbane he was driven straight to the hotel and straight on stage to pitch for London. He came away without knowing if the journey had been a complete waste of time or a quiet success.

"I have no idea how members voted. I don't know, for instance, how Pat Hickey voted but he was always courteous and wise and he was there to have ideas bounced off in a completely non-partial way if we needed him. Yet I have no idea how he voted."

On the large, overarching question of WHY, Coe had two conversations in recent years with his children. The conversations inform how he approaches the challenge.

"I came out to the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003. I'd just been elected as council member of my federation (athletics) and was quite happy. I brought the kids to Paris. They like track and field. It has worked out that I take them to the World Athletics Championships because it's easier to cope with than the Olympics and you are in the same stadium. Like all parents you want to explain to them that life is occasionally quite good and sometimes privileged and they should appreciate that.

"So we were being driven to the stadium. Four in the car heading for good seats. I did my 'you're very lucky kids' routine.

"Blank looks. I said, 'Come on, think how lucky the other kids in your class must think you are'. And she put down the iPod and she looked at me and she said, 'Dad, yeah, but listen, there probably aren't more than three in my class who even know the World Athletics Championships are on'.

"This was a bit of a stiletto between the ribs. I have four Olympic medals, 12 world records, spent years and years involved, chairman of the Sports Council and just joined my federation and my daughter was telling me, 'Dad, you don't understand what's going on out there'."

He didn't quite believe that until a year later. He was doing some work for the Laureus Sports for Good Foundation. He found himself in a room with Daley Thompson, Nadia Comaneci, Martina Navratilova, Boris Becker. They were looking at sheets containing the names of possible athletes who could be invited to join the federation.

That night he called home to say goodnight to the kids.

"By the way, have you ever heard of somebody called Tony Hawk?" he asked his son as an afterthought.

Silence. Sounds of exasperation being mustered.

"Dad! You bought me his computer game. I have his poster on my wall."

Pause. Unholy tussle. Other son grabs phone.

"Dad! Dad! Dad! Can you get me Tony Hawk's autograph. Puh-lease!!!"

Sebastian Coe sighs. His sport is sliding off the radar. "And I didn't know who this guy was. Somewhere in there is the narrative. I'm in my 40s. I'm supposed to know this territory. I sit with people on a regular basis who claim to know this territory. If skateboarding is where it's at in terms of the youthful imagination and if track and field is the largest of the Olympic sports there is something we have to address.

"We know that getting kids into sport is 20 times harder today than it has ever been. That's where we positioned the London bid. This is the challenge. This is what London can do. In the end it's about sport, waking up that part of the imagination again."

Passionate in his opposition to drugs

He knows that will be a bigger task than tickling the IOC. He is a long-standing and passionate opponent of drugs in sport and remembers clearly the 1978 European Championships. First big race. First time meeting Ovett, who he describes as, by a distance, the best athlete he ever raced against.

Coe got off to a flyer only to see Ovett steam past him with a hundred metres to go. Ovett was smiling. It was the first time the two had met.

Coe was absorbing the implications of this when five paces up the track the East German Olaf Beyer came around the bend and past both Coe and Ovett to win the race. Beyer had been struggling at 200. He wasn't seen much again.

"It's awful to suppose. I have no evidence but that sudden new-found form stuck in my mind."

And years later when you watch an Olympic 100 metres final how much do you believe? Pause "Some of it." Pause.

"But we will win the battle. Twenty five years ago I wouldn't have answered that.

"I was the first athlete to speak to the IOC back in 1981. I used more than half the time to talk about drug abuse in sport. You could sense the horror. "

Coe has always done things his way. Moscow and Los Angeles were a wonderful legacy to leave.

London, if it follows in the unorthodox grace of its chairman, will be unsurpassable.

Born September 29th, 1956.

Educated Sheffield, Loughborough College.

Marital Status Divorced (four children).

Political career MP for Falmouth and Camborne 1992 to 1997. Former Conservative Chief of Staff.

Honours Two Olympic golds (1,500 metres); two Olympic silvers (800 metres); one European gold, two silvers, one bronze; one World Cup gold, one silver; two European Cup golds; one European indoor gold; one European junior bronze; four AAA titles (one youth, one junior, two senior); one UK title.

World Records (8)

800 metres: 1 min 42.33 sec (Oslo, July 5th, 1979), 1 min 41.73 sec (Florence, June 10th, 1981).

1,000 metres: 2 min 13.4 sec (Oslo, July 11th, 1980), 2 min 12.18 sec (Oslo, July 11th, 1981).

1,500 metres: 3 min 32.03 sec (Zurich, August 15th, 1979).

Mile: 3 min 48.95 sec (Oslo, July 17th, 1979), 3 min 48.53 sec (Zurich, August 19th, 1981), 3 min 47.33 sec (Brussels, August 28th, 1981).